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Monday, 11 September 2017

Canberra International Film Festival - Festival Director Andrew Pike explains the format and its focus on past as well as present

Programming the retrospective component of
CIFF has had its creative challenges:for
the retrospective programmer, the world is your oyster.The programmer can theoretically choose
anything, so how does one structure it, and make sense of it all for the
viewer?

I’ve chosen to follow the model of the
wonderful retrospective film festival in Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, and have
chosen to create, where possible, strands of films, linking them wherever
possible.The intention is that you, the
audience can follow the strands that interest you (or can watch everything if
you have the time!).

The strands that I have constructed for
this year’s CIFF involve a major 7-film survey of the work of Jacques Tourneur
plus a cluster of shorter 2-film groupings.The main strands could be summarised briefly in this way:

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1. a celebration of the great film
performances by Googie Withers in British cinema in the 30s, 40s and early 50s,
prompted by the fact that 2017 is the centenary of her birth, and because she
contributed significantly to Australian culture, mainly through the theatre,
but is unknown to younger audiences.We’ll be showing two of her greatest films:IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY and WHTE CORRIDORS.

- 2. A re-discovery of the early
work of Pat Jackson, a British director much feted in his day as one of the
great hopes of British cinema, but whose career led him to the anonymity of
television, and he is now sadly forgotten.We’ll show his first and third features, WESTERN APPROACHES and WHITE
CORRIDORS - the latter starring none other than Googie Withers.Such intersections between strands are one of
the exciting aspects of this sort of programming.

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Len Lye

3. A celebration of the rarely
seen work of Len Lye, the extraordinary New Zealand animator and kinetic
sculptor.His films and sculptures have
been assiduously conserved in New Zealand and we will have two Len Lye experts
visiting CIFF to discuss his work.Lye’s
animated films were all very short, commissioned in the 1930s by the progressive
GPO Film Unit and then by other governmental and commercial agencies during the
war. Lye’s films will be scattered like sparkles throughout the Festival
program – little bursts of vibrant colour, good humour and vitality that will
be wonderful curtain-raisers before feature films.

-With my co-programmer, Alice
Taylor, we have tried to construct links that allow some of the contemporary
films that Alice has chosen for CIFF, to speak to some of the retrospective selections.Two brand new films will be matched with
earlier work by the filmmakers involved:Gaylene Preston’s remarkable new film, MY YEAR WITH HELEN, will be matched
with her earlier drama, HOME BY CHRISTMAS; and the French-Romani director, Tony
Gatlif, will be represented with his fabulous new work, DROM, and with his
first break-out success, the exhilarating LATCHO DROM.

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Jacques Tourneur

And then there is the exceptional
Jacques Tourneur:we will provide a rare
opportunity to discover, re-discover or to re-evaluate the work of this elusive
and unsung genius.Tourneur was a French
director who made films for the Hollywood studios in the 1940s and 50s, many of
them ultra-low-budget, and across a wide range of genres.We will screen six of his films as well as a
new French documentary about his life and work.Interestingly, the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland has
also just screened an extensive retrospective of Tourneur’s films and CIFF can
be proud that we have had the same idea of celebrating the achievements of this
remarkable “auteur.”We will be
welcoming as our Festival guest, Chris Fujiwara, author of the authoritative
study of Tourneur.He will be
introducing most of the screenings and will be presenting an extended Conversation
session about Tourneur’s endlessly fascinating work.

I hope you will find unexpected pleasures
in the program that Alice and I have designed:
it’s been an exciting exercise for us to bring it all together, and we
look forward to sharing it with you.